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The Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology has been sponsoring excavations in Jerusalem for over 50 years
Understanding and learning lessons from the past is critical to understanding where human beings have been and where we are going, according to Brent Nagtegaal of the Armstrong Institute of Biblical Archaeology in Jerusalem.
The Institute, named after philanthropist and theologian Herbert W. Armstrong, focuses on sharing Israel’s biblical archaeology and significant discoveries from excavations in Jerusalem in order to showcase them around the world. The new building opened on Sept. 4.
“The excavations are mainly focused on the biblical period,” Nagtegaal told Christian journalist Paul Calvert during a recent interview. “We’re trying to give life to the Bible in a way that puts the actual physical artifacts, associates them with biblical history. And that’s what we find in Jerusalem repeatedly. We find excavation that’s done, in many ways, in a scientific manner that is separate from the biblical text. And yet we find it very much correlating with the history we all read in the Bible.”
Nagtegaal said many of their discoveries at the Institute prove that the Bible is correct and provided definite proof of the existence of biblical personalities, such as King Hezekiah during the times of Jeremiah the prophet.
Nagtegaal said, for example, that they discovered two seal impressions – or stamp signatures, an ancient kind of middle aged wax and impression with a ring – related to Jeremiah during the time of Zedekiah.
“We found a couple of those [seal impressions] of biblical people – first and last names – that no biblical ‘denier’, if you want to call it, would deny that these people are the same people as the people in the Bible.”
